Bailey – Sean Hagen was sitting in his English class Wednesday at Platte Canyon High School when a voice boomed over the loudspeaker.
“Code white! Code white!”
The students in his class looked befuddled, not knowing what the term meant. But, Hagen said, the teachers sprang into action, recognizing the term school officials use for an urgent lockdown.
His teacher tried to move the students in the classroom away from the door.
Moments later, he said, he heard a gunshot.
Students from the room where the shot was fired, which Hagen said was next door, ran to his room and knocked on the door.
“They told us there’s a guy in there shooting at the wall and that he’s yelling these things like ‘Get up against the wall or I’ll shoot,”‘ Hagen said.
The minutes and hours that followed for Platte Canyon students were chaotic and terrifying. Some students said they were told to get down and move to the back of the room. Others were told to run to more secure rooms. Many said they were confused and horrified by what was happening.
A few doors away from Hagen’s room, his sister, Kelly, a sophomore, was in the French room. She said that at one point, police officers told her class to run down the hallway toward the stairs leading to the first level. Then, as the class reached the stairs, she said, the officers told them to stop and go back where they had been.
“It was just really scary to see a bunch of SWAT team members with assault rifles in our school yelling at us to run down the hallway,” Kelly Hagen said.
About 3:30 p.m., buses arrived to take the students to Deer Creek Elementary School, where they could meet their parents. Students packed the buses three to a seat.
The arriving buses were mobbed by anxious parents at Deer Creek Elementary. Students stuck their heads out the windows and waved at their parents. Some parents grabbed onto the edges of open windows and pulled themselves up to look inside.
“All I kept hearing was about girl hostages, and I was freaking out,” said Mary Sousa, Sean and Kelly’s mom, who met her children with relieved hugs.
Other parents got cellphone calls from their kids while they rode the bus to the elementary school. One parent, upon hearing that her son was OK, clicked her cellphone shut and crumpled into tears, as other parents comforted her.
When the buses arrived, parents applauded.
Many students arrived at the elementary school in tears, and some clung to their parents as they walked.
When Gail Oker saw her son, Keifer, a freshman at the high school, she squeezed him tightly.
“I’m OK, Mom, geez,” Keifer said.
“I am so happy that he’s all right,” Oker said.
Parents and students dispersed quickly upon reuniting, leaving only a few remaining at the elementary school by late afternoon.
The parents of students who were in the English class the gunman entered were taken inside the school to meet their children.
A line of six cars followed a state patrolman’s vehicle as he left the elementary school parking lot.
Moments prior, Tom Grigg left the elementary school with his son, who had also been in the classroom.
“He’s going to be hurting for a while,” Grigg said.
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
Platte Canyon High School
Location: 57393 U.S. Highway 285, Bailey
Enrollment (2005-06): 467
Built: 1958, expanded in 2000.
Average daily attendance: 96.6 percent
Dropout rate: 2.4 percent
Student-to-teacher ratio: 18-to-1
Average teaching experience: 13 years
Teachers with advanced degrees: 50 percent
College-bound students: 65-75 percent
CSAP rank for academic performance: High
Ninth- and 10th-graders scoring proficient or advanced on CSAP: Reading, 75 percent; Writing, 61 percent; Math, 44 percent
Students receiving free or reduced-price lunch: 16.2 percent
Nickname: Huskies
Source: Platte Canyon High School, Colorado Department of Education
